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SIMON H – MY FAITH JOURNEY

I was brought up in a Christian family and up until the age of 14 I went to church.  My parents allowed me to make a choice as to whether to go. I felt that something existed, but I was not sure what it was, and so decided it was not logical to go to church.  It was also one of the first large decisions I had the opportunity to make and so I took the choice not to go.  But in these formative years I had received a lot of knowledge of the Bible and God.  This was to form a good basis some years later when I became a Christian.  I looked a lot at religion in my later teenage years.  I was attracted to Buddhism, and there were several times when I almost became a Christian, but did not quite feel ready.  In my last year at university I was visited by the Christian Union.  I had been getting closer to God for a few months and that night I knew what to do and I gave my life to Christ.  I started the following Sunday going to the local Methodist church as the type of church I was familiar with. 

Leaving university I started work and joined the local Methodist church (which was also joint URC).  I did Scouts there, something that was an important part of my life, and so the two went together.  I met my first wife there and got involved in the church.  I was active in a house group and involved in several committees such as missions.  I have always found small groups to be an important feature in my Christian life, as they enable us to look at issues at a more personal and in depth.  I have in the main been a member of one where you took it in turns to lead each week – an exercise that in itself deepens your faith.  Several years after becoming a Christian I was touched deeply by the Holy Spirit, and so began a charismatic or evangelical emphasis that has played an important part in my faith to this day

My wife and I split up and we were divorced.  Although I remained at the church and got great support it was a time of personal testing and also for the formation of my views on divorce – you look at things in a different way when you go through it yourself!  I am more sympathetic to divorce now than I was before.

A few years after this I served a 4-year term as an elder or steward of the church (equivalent to a church warden).  This was a time of being in the lead, especially as we had to select a new church minister and run without one for a while.

In this time there was also the stirrings of beginning to lead worship.  Things I had done supported this, such as leading Scout meetings, and gave me a confidence that I had not had before. Around 2000 I felt a call from God to do something about it.  So I did our church worship leaders course, to see if this was the right way to go. I felt then, and have found all the way through this, that if God wants you to go in a certain direction, then the doors will open.

I helped with worship leading for several years, and then a number of us got together to see if we could get together something that had existed some years before – a group of people who would conduct services around the area.  I was one of the main leaders in this, as I felt there was a need, and that God was calling me to do more.  I became the overall coordinator, for the worship team, responsible for making sure services were planned and liaising with individual churches. God gave me an opening in terms of time to do this, in that both my parents died at this time.  So although a very sad experience in itself, the time I had spent on looking after them those past few years was no longer needed there and was available for this.

Alongside this my job came to an end and I had to find another one elsewhere.  A number of openings were available and I decided to take the step of working in London, which seemed a big leap having worked locally for the past 18 years.  It seemed like a step of faith, but it was to prove right.  My job actually meant that I saw a lot of my parents in the last few years of their life, as the jobs took me regularly to where they lived.  My current job, which I would almost certainly never have got if I had not moved, has proven to be fulfilling

I’ve also been involved in prayer work and regular prayer meetings, being on church prayer teams and prayer work at Spring Harvest have been important to me the past 10 years in particular.  Spring Harvest itself has been a highlight of my life since 1993 – a great condensed week of teaching and worship that shows what a church can be like

Along the way I have been active in workplace fellowships.  I helped to found one in the 1980s, and have been active in several where I have worked in London.  They provide a link between my faith and work.  I also chair the multi faith forum in the government department where I work, as it enables me to link my faith into the formal structure of the department (albeit that it is not a specifically Christian activity). 

I felt the need to do something more in leading services, and was also being encouraged by others.   Through the time of the worship team, I had done all the individual parts of a service, and had also put together many service plans.  I had done all the bits of leading a service, but never together, all at the same time, by myself.  But at the end of 2005 I finally felt pushed enough by God to actually go forward for Methodist local preacher training. 

In 2006 I was accepted for training, and began the course and leading services by myself.  In 2007 I met Cathy, and we decided to get married a year or so later, which we did in 2009.  One question around this was what should I do with my calling to preaching.  We decided that the church life of our family was best carried on through St Peter’s where Cathy already went (and myself when I visited her).  This meant I had to look at how I could transfer my calling to the Church of England, and this was how I ended up doing the lay reader training I am currently doing.  Both of us remain active at St Peters, including running a homegroup that came out of an Alpha course

God has now opened up many avenues on my journey.  Some of the more important ones I have recounted here, both positive and negative, good and bad.  You generally learn something from them though; even if it was that you should not have been there.